


Rocket and Lylla's eating habits

by Woozletania



Series: Rocket headcanons [3]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-30 21:02:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12117174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Woozletania/pseuds/Woozletania
Summary: Just a bit of worldbuilding.  As a long time DM back in the day I tend to write stuff like this down so stories and suchlike have an internal consistency. Even if the bulk of it doesn't get used knowing it allows for more consistent character behavior.





	Rocket and Lylla's eating habits

Rocket is extremely omnivorous. If you put it in front of him and it's vaguely edible, he will eat it. He will eat things that no one with a shot at better food will touch. In the bad days after he escaped the lab and before he became a reasonably successful bounty hunter he picked through trash cans like a real raccoon. He was already malnourished when he escaped and simply had to eat whatever was available including spoiled food, small animals, etc. Luckily he has a robust metabolism (raccoons naturally being tough, and his immune system and general physiology being quite enhanced) and he rarely gets sick no matter what he eats.

That is not to say he doesn't have favorites. While his sense of taste is poor by human standards his sense of smell is far better than a man's (it was augmented, to allow him to detect enemies and determine if food is safe to eat), and he instinctively prefers food that is both fresh and as close to its natural state as possible. He absolutely loves frog-like creatures, fresh seafood, or anything close. Bugs count as far as he is concerned. He will pick the meat out of shellfish and leave a neat pile of carapace next to his plate. He also very much likes fresh fruit and vegetables, with berries and corn (or the space equivalent) high on his list. His enhanced physiology prevents him from having allergic reactions to things he eats, and though he is by no means immune to poison, small amounts of unhealthy chemicals (or things that would hurt a normal raccoon) have minimal effect on him. The Milano used to have a vermin problem (no pun intended) but that stopped after he moved in since he happily caught and ate every bug and rodent in sight. Mouse pie was voted off the menu (though Drax would eat it without complaint) to which Rocket shrugged and said “More for me.”

He will eat very spicy foods since he “grew up” starving and had to eat what was available, and he won't complain, but Peter, who likes them himself, noticed early on that he would flinch and grimace as he ate and would take the spicy stuff as the last thing he ate or mix it with other foods to dilute the sting. As a result, when Peter is cooking, he always makes sure some of the food is mild and when Rocket is cooking he will spice some things more heavily than he prefers since he knows the tastes of the other Guardians varies from his own. Peter is an excellent cook and so is Rocket, though the raccoon's habit of mixing ingredients with his hands sometimes gets him banished to dishwashing duty.

Lylla was Uplifted from an obligate carnivore and wasn't intended to be a self-sufficient battlefield soldier like Rocket but rather a “civilized” uplift, so less effort was taken to allow her to eat a variety of food. Given a chance she is very carnivorous and prefers uncooked meat as food, ideally fish, crustaceans or shellfish, but she can eat many fruits and even some vegetables. Grains aren't much use to her digestive system and though she is too polite to complain and they will keep her alive, she won't eat them if she has a choice. In a perfect world her dinner is a whole fish and she will hold it in her hands like a real otter and shear off bites with her sharp side teeth, but civilized behavior is part of her “programming” so she is a perfectly polite dinner guest unless she's in a casual atmosphere.

Her sense of smell isn't as good as Rocket's but her sense of taste is better, so she appreciates subtle flavors more. On the other hand her carnivorous nature means that if you give her a blueberry muffin she will winkle out the berries and leave the bready bits behind (which Rocket will immediately eat because wasting food is foreign to him). Likewise, give her an omelet with peppers and soon all that will be left is the peppers. Again, this is in a casual environment, in a formal one she will eat everything and smile.

Rocket habitually eats with his hands since his sense of touch is literally inhumanly good and has to be chided to pick up a fork, whereas Lylla knows the salad fork from the dinner fork and will nudge him and give instructions (too quietly for non-Uplifts to hear) on the rare occasions that the Guardians are in a hoity-toity environment.

Both Rocket and Lylla eat about twice as much as you would expect since their augmented brains and metabolically powered cybernetics dramatically increase their caloric intake requirements. Luckily there seems to be some sort of inbuilt metabolic “switch” built in by the labs, or else they both would get quite fat during periods of low activity. This would not normally be a problem for an otter since swimming is physically taxing but there isn't a pool on the Milano. If they ever get a larger ship, Rocket plans to modify the water storage tanks into a swimming pool.

Random notes: There is a shower on the Milano, which she loves and she's convinced Rocket to join her in there, which on the one hand makes the other Guardians happy since bathing is foreign to Rocket and he gets a bit whiffy but on the other hand can be uncomfortable since Rocket and Lylla's relationship has moved past the “platonic sleeping buddies” stage. More privacy is on Rocket's to-do list, for though the little Uplifts don't take up much space the growing crew of the ship is beginning to tax the available space. Drax has had to sleep on one of the common area beds since Mantis moved in and Rocket and Lylla sleep in a tiny (waist high) cabin he walled off under his workbench after he finally admitted that he wanted to be more than friends. Pretty much everyone craves more space at this point as not everyone is cool with the Ravager “sleeping in piles” habit. Lylla is the only one who genuinely doesn't care since she is extremely social and with her long tube of a body would be perfectly comfortable living in the Milano's air vents. (Rocket tried that once but they convinced him to stop for various reasons, one being that sometimes you could smell raccoon throughout the ship.)


End file.
